Tom Bombadil is not Aule (and Goldberry is not Yavanna)

Essay by Steuard Jensen

In my full essay "What is Tom
Bombadil", I categorize the idea that he is the Vala Aule as a "theory with fatal flaws". Although I
believe my arguments there to be more than sufficient, many readers
have considered them too brief and dismissive and claim instead that
Gene Hargrove's detailed and well written essay "Who is Tom
Bombadil?" makes a compelling case that I have not refuted.

I have a great deal of respect for Hargrove's writing; indeed, the
desire to improve on his conclusions while doing justice to the
quality of his article was one of my own motives in exploring the
topic. I intentionally did not frame any portion of my essay
explicitly as a refutation of his article because that felt far more
negative and adversarial than I wanted to be. But as his flawed theory
has continued to be very popular in the ten years since my essay
appeared, it seems to be worth confronting the claim that Bombadil is
Aule in detail. I will begin by collecting all of my arguments against
it in one place (many taken directly from my full essay), and then I
will address Hargrove's arguments in its favor.

Why Bombadil cannot be Aule

Aule and Tom Bombadil are both highly distinctive characters, and
Aule in particular plays a major role in the cosmology of
Middle-earth. Thus, despite the mystery surrounding Bombadil, careful
consideration of what we know about each of them will allow us to draw
firm conclusions from the evidence we have. Some of the clearest
evidence about Bombadil is based on statements made at the Council of
Elrond. Objecting to Tom as a guardian of the Ring, Glorfindel
says,

"...soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding
place and would bend all his power toward it. Could that power
be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not. I think that in the
end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was
First; and then Night will come."

Unless Glorfindel is flat out wrong, this makes it
clear that Bombadil is weaker than Sauron in a direct conflict of
"power," whatever that term means (it might well include Sauron's full
military strength).[1] Galdor concurs, saying
that

"Power to defy our Enemy is not in him, unless such power is in
the earth itself. And yet we see that Sauron can torture and
destroy the very hills."

Galdor admits to knowing "little of Iarwain save
the name", so it must not take great learning to make general
statements about his power and perhaps its source. Significantly,
nobody at the Council objects to either of these statements. It seems
likely that whatever limited knowledge Galdor based his comments on
was common among the wise and learned Elves at the Council. More
specifically, Elrond is clearly reasonably familiar with Bombadil and
Gandalf seems to know quite a bit about his nature and abilities, but
neither of them object.

Although it is exceedingly unlikely that so many knowledgeable
individuals at the Council were mistaken, some have suggested that
they intentionally concealed the truth. This cannot be disproved, but
it would be very different from the treatment of other secrets at the
Council. For example, when Gloin asks about the Three Rings, Elrond
states that "of them it is not permitted to speak", but nevertheless
violates that prohibition (to a small degree). He does not feign
ignorance or even simply remain silent: this Council does not seem to
have been a place for partial truths.

Given this, it seems very reasonable to accept the
Council's statements. This choice is corroborated in Letter #144,
where Tolkien says that "Ultimately only the victory of the West will
allow Bombadil to continue, or even to survive. Nothing would be left
for him in the world of Sauron." While it does not speak directly of
a conflict between the two, this quote makes it clear that Bombadil
would be in some sense "killed" if Sauron was victorious, just as
Glorfindel said.

Now consider that evidence in the context of The
Silmarillion and its statements about Aule. In particular, the
"Valaquenta" says that eight of the Valar "were of chief
power and reverence":

"the Aratar, the High Ones of Arda: Manwe and Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna
and Aule, Mandos, Nienna, and Orome. Though Manwe is their King
and holds their allegiance under Eru, in majesty they are peers,
surpassing beyond compare all others, whether of the Valar and the
Maiar, or of any other order that Iluvatar has sent into Ea."

I cannot believe that any of these great powers
would be so weak (in any sense) that "the power to defy our Enemy is
not in him". The gulf in power and majesty between the Aratar and even
the greatest of the Maiar is "beyond compare": I do not believe that
even Sauron and all his armies could "kill" Aule, for example, and yet
Tolkien's letter says that Bombadil would not survive a victory by
Sauron. (Although Tolkien wrote elsewhere that "Sauron was 'greater',
effectively, in the Second Age than Morgoth at the end of the First",
that was because Morgoth alone among the Valar had expended his native
power to gain control over the physical world. No "unfallen" Vala
would do such a thing.) To my eye, this evidence is already entirely
sufficient to reject the Aule theory.

But even for those who don't like arguments about the relative
"power" of different beings (a view that I tend to share), there is
still fairly direct evidence that Bombadil was not one of the Valar.
In "In the House of Tom Bombadil", Tom says of himself, "He was here
before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves
passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent."
Bombadil says that he "was here already", not merely that he "had been
here": this implies a long term presence in the area; in fact, this
passage gives the impression that he never left. However, we read in
The Silmarillion that after the destruction
of the Lamps, "the Valar came seldom over the mountains to
Middle-earth". (The only Valar said to spend much time there were
Yavanna and Orome, and apart from Orome's time with the
Quendi before the Great Journey these seem to have been brief visits
rather than extended habitation.) While falling short of a complete
proof on its own, this strongly implies that Bombadil is not one of
the Valar.

Another argument is that the Valar were the governors of Arda and
deeply concerned with the fate of the Children of Iluvatar (only at
the moment of the Akallabeth are we told that "the Valar laid down
their government of Arda"). However, when asked if Bombadil could
guard the Ring, Gandalf says that, "He might do so, if all the free
folk of the world begged him, but he would not understand the need."
Even in the unlikely event that a Vala abandoned his responsibilities
and chose to ignore all of the evil (and good) in the world, it could
never be said that he would not understand the struggle.

Bombadil and Goldberry don't act like Aule and
Yavanna

All of the arguments above aim to foreclose the very
possibility that Bombadil could be Aule, and I consider them
compelling. But if you do not find them convincing, the next step is
to actually consider Bombadil and Aule as characters and ask whether
they seem consistent with one another, and then to do the same with
Goldberry and Yavanna. In each case, even a brief comparison makes the
connection seem entirely unjustified.

What do we know of Bombadil? He and Goldberry live a seemingly
simple life, surrounded by nature and far from other "speaking
peoples". Tom wanders within his country, largely untouched by hostile
or dangerous inhabitants like Old Man Willow or the barrow wights, but
for the most part leaving them alone despite having the evident power
to control or eliminate them. He takes joy in all of nature: the verse
to call him for aid says, "By water, wood and hill, by the reed and
willow". He observes and understands his surroundings rather than
owning and controlling them; in Letter #153, Tolkien states that
Bombadil is

"a particular embodying of pure (real) natural science: the spirit
that desires knowledge of other things, their history and nature,
because they are 'other' and wholly independent of the
enquiring mind".

He is lighthearted even in the most serious of
moments, and practically everything he says is in song or verse. (Try
reading even his normal dialog aloud!)

And what do we know of Aule? The "Valaquenta" says that

"He is a smith and a master of all crafts, and he delights in works
of skill, however small, as much as in the mighty buildings of old.
... Both [Aule and Melkor], also, desired to make things of their
own that should be new and unthought of by others, and delighted in
the praise of their skill."

Moreover, as described in "Of Aule and Yavanna",
Aule was so eager "to have learners to whom he could teach his lore
and his crafts" that he created the Dwarves (despite his fear that
others would disapprove, as proved to be the case). But as Yavanna
said when she learned of the Dwarves, "thy children will have little
love for the things of my love. They will love first the things made
by their own hands, as doth their father." Aule values the natural
world as a source of tools and supplies more than for its own
intrinsic worth.

There are certainly points of contact between these descriptions,
but by and large the personalities they describe are extremely
different. Bombadil shows no apparent interest in smith-work and
little special interest in works of craft at all: even the brooch he
takes from the barrow-mound he values as much for its former owner as
for its craftsmanship. ("Here is a pretty toy for Tom and for his lady!
Fair was she who long ago wore this on her shoulder.") For his part,
Aule shows little interest in trees and flowers (except as a source of
wood); it is hard to imagine him collecting water lilies.

If anything, Goldberry is an even worse match to Yavanna than Tom
is to Aule. We know even less about Goldberry than we do about
Bombadil, but what we do know paints a very specific and consistent
picture: at almost every opportunity, she is associated with water,
and with the river Withywindle in particular. I will not give a full list of examples
here, but the overall theme is clear. Goldberry, the "River-daughter",
was sitting in the rushes by a deep pool in the Withywindle when Tom
first saw her. Her voice is repeatedly described as "like the song of
a glad water flowing" or "rippling down" or "falling gently as if it
was flowing down the rain", and her songs are about rain and pools and
rivers. Tolkien made that connection explicit in Letter #210: reacting
to a proposed adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, he said, "We
are not in 'fairy-land', but in real river-lands in autumn. Goldberry
represents the actual seasonal changes in such lands."

In short, essentially every single thing we know about Goldberry
links her strongly to water and to the Withywindle in particular. This
is a poor match with any of the Ainur explicitly named in
The Silmarillion, even those associated with water. Ulmo is the
Lord of Waters, but his interest spans all the waters of Arda, not one
small river. Osse and Uinen, meanwhile, are only associated with the
sea. But the connection with Yavanna is even more tenuous: there are
certainly many living things in the Withywindle valley, but for the
most part Goldberry seems less interested in them than in the water
itself. To claim that they are the same person would require us to
ignore either the one sure thing we know about Goldberry or the vast
majority of what we know about Yavanna.

Important evidence not addressed by the Aule theory

In addition to the many reasons to actively believe that Bombadil
is not Aule, there are also very significant pieces of evidence about
Bombadil that the Aule theory does not explain or even address. One of
these first arises when Tom tells the hobbits, "Eldest, that's what I
am." This seems to be an important clue to Bombadil's nature, and it
is repeated at least twice at the Council of Elrond: Elrond tells us
that Bombadil's Elvish name "Iarwain Ben-adar" means "oldest and
fatherless", and as quoted earlier Glorfindel says that Tom would be
"Last as he was First".

What can terms like "Eldest" or "First" tell us about Bombadil?
Tolkien may or may not have intended for those terms to be taken
absolutely literally, but he surely intended them to mean
something! In particular, all of the terms used are more
specific than just "very old": they imply some measure of uniqueness,
not just (for example) that Bombadil is one of the many Ainur (who
existed before Ea itself). But Aule is a significant character
throughout the early history of Arda, and it would be quite surprising
if any significant "first" applied to him without being mentioned in
the Silmarillion texts. And even if that oddity is ignored, it
is difficult to come up with a meaning of First that could apply to
Aule-as-Bombadil and yet remain consistent with Glorfindel's word
"Last": Sauron at least would remain as another Ainu in Middle-earth
after Bombadil was gone. Whether you view all this as actually
contradicting the Aule theory or not, failing to address these
important hints at all is a serious weakness.

The Aule theory also fails to even touch on most of the evidence
that some use to support the idea that Bombadil is a nature spirit. My
full essay discusses that evidence in detail (starting here, and especially here), but one clear example
comes from Galdor's comments at the Council of Elrond (already cited
above): "Power to defy our Enemy is not in him, unless such power is
in the earth itself. And yet we see that Sauron can torture and
destroy the very hills." Galdor felt that he knew enough about
Bombadil to make that claim. But if Galdor knew that Bombadil was
Aule, what could he have meant? Sauron may "torture and destroy the
very hills", but Aule created them in the first place! And if Bombadil
was Aule and Galdor did not know it, then what did Galdor think he was
talking about, and where did he get such a bizarrely wrong idea? If
the Aule theory is true, then one way or another Galdor appears to
have been talking gibberish, and everyone else at the Council seems to
simply nod and agree. This is just one example of "nature spirit"
evidence, but as one of the ultimate creators and shapers of nature
Aule and Yavanna are rarely a good match for the various hints that
Bombadil and Goldberry embody aspects of Arda rather than the creators
of those aspects.

Addressing specific arguments in favor of Bombadil as Aule

Given that the theory that Bombadil and Goldberry are Aule and
Yavanna comes primarily from Gene Hargrove's essay "Who is Tom
Bombadil?", it is important to address its claims specifically. I find
Hargrove's writing to be quite clear and many of his arguments
compelling. He makes a good case that seeking to understand Bombadil
is worthwhile, and his arguments favoring Bombadil as one of the Ainur
(and against certain sorts of "nature spirit") make a great deal of
sense. In fact, I have no serious objections to anything that he writes
before he begins to search out a specific identity for Tom.

But at that point, his reasoning quickly stumbles. Hargrove
mentions the idea that Bombadil might be one of the Maiar, but then he
commits a grave logical error, writing:

"The only problem is that there is no Maia in the Silmarillion who
matches Tom's general character. It is only when one turns to the
Valar themselves that potential candidates emerge."

It is true that Bombadil is not a close match to
any Maiar named and described in The Silmarillion, or for that
matter in any of his other writings: Tolkien did not name or describe
very many Maiar at all. But that is no impediment: named or not, the
Maiar were very numerous. The "Valaquenta" makes this explicit: "Their
number is not known to the Elves, and few have names in any of the
tongues of the Children of Iluvatar". Thus, Hargrove's argument quoted
above is fundamentally flawed: there is absolutely no reason to limit
the candidates for Bombadil's identity to the Valar.

Unfortunately, that mistake undermines the foundation of the rest
of Hargrove's essay: a conclusion reached by process of elimination
cannot be trusted if the vast majority of candidates were eliminated
in error. Nevertheless, I will continue to address the evidence that
he presents. He begins his argument by attempting to match Goldberry
to the (married) Valier, and concludes that,

"With Yavanna, however, we have just the right emphasis, for she is
responsible for all living things, with a special preference for
plants. Since she is Queen of the Earth, it is easy to imagine her
watering the forest with special care, as Goldberry does during the
Hobbits' visit."

Although Hargrove may consider Goldberry's
fondness for water plants like lilies and reeds to be "just the right"
match for the Queen of the Earth and patroness of all living things, I
see a considerable distinction. Moreover, his claim that Goldberry
caused the rain is not so obvious from the text as to be made without
justification (indeed, Tom later told the hobbits that, "I am no
weather-master, nor is aught that goes on two legs"), and even if she
did bring the rain, there is no hint that it was meant to water the
forest: Tom says, "This is Goldberry's washing day, and her
autumn-cleaning". I have no memory of Goldberry expressing affection
for the trees of the forest at all, nor for any of the animal life
also beloved of Yavanna.

Hargrove's next argument is to compare Yavanna's appearance in
The Silmarillion to Goldberry's in LotR. There are certainly
similarities in those descriptions, but two characters can both wear
green robes (even symbolically significant ones) without being the
same person, and I am wary of reading much into a single case where
the same author describes similar-looking characters in similar ways.
(And even when Hargrove makes the comparison, he needs to spend much
of his time explaining why the two descriptions don't actually match
in detail.)

At the end of Hargrove's discussion of Goldberry, he does address
her identity as "Riverwoman's daughter" and the difficulties that it
poses for his Yavanna theory. But he seems to consider that name
itself to be the only issue, and sets it aside as perhaps just a
misunderstanding by those who used it: "the fact that some people
believe that Goldberry is Riverwoman's Daughter does not absolutely,
literally have to be true." But it is worth noting that the only
person we ever see use that name for her is Bombadil himself: it is
not just "some people" who describe her that way, but the person most
likely to know the truth! (I do not know whether Hargrove overlooked
that fact, or whether he believed that Aule was one of the people
confused about who Yavanna was, or what.) But more importantly, this
argument does nothing to address the consistent water imagery that I
have already discussed above: that name is the least of the reasons to
connect Goldberry with the Withywindle.

Finally, Hargrove moves on to discuss Bombadil himself. He does a
nice job of drawing parallels between Bombadil's "vow of poverty" and
Aule's delight in making rather than possessing. The comparison is
quite plausible as he presents it, but I believe that it overlooks
some important differences. For example, in Letter #153 where Tolkien
refers to Bombadil as "a particular embodying of pure (real) natural
science", he goes on to describe Tom's love of knowledge for its own
sake,

"and entirely unconcerned with 'doing' anything with the knowledge:
Zoology and Botany not Cattle-breeding or Agriculture. Even the
Elves hardly show this: they are primarily artists."

This is in direct contradiction with
Aule's character, and even specifically with the aspects of it that
Hargrove has focused on. Bombadil is never portrayed as a maker or
artist, while Aule is "the Smith" and the making of things is his
greatest love. Hargrove's argument relies entirely on one small aspect
of Aule's character, while overlooking the most fundamental aspects of
all.

One of the real strengths of the idea that Bombadil is Aule is that
it provides a very plausible explanation for his attitude toward (and
power over) the Ring, and Hargrove spells this out well. Aule was
Sauron's first teacher and the greatest craftsman in Ea, as well as
one of its chief powers in all respects: I do not know of any other
explanation that addresses this mystery as well. However, there are
other plausible (but less complete) explanations (largely based on
Tolkien's comments about the significance of Tom's "vow of poverty" in
Letter #144), so this success of the Aule theory is by no means
decisive.

The last section of Hargrove's essay discusses some of the puzzles
of the Aule theory. To the question of why Aule would be living near
the Old Forest at all, he answers that perhaps Aule simply wanted to
study hobbits. I don't know what to think of that, but hobbits
couldn't have been Aule's original or primary reason for living in
Eriador: Bombadil had lived there far longer than any hobbits had. At
the Council, Elrond recalls the days when the Old Forest extended
south to Dunland (which I believe dates the memory to before the great
Numenorian forestry projects during the Second Age) and says that
Bombadil "walked the woods and hills long ago, and even then was older
than the old."

Hargrove also tries to counter some of the objections to the Aule
theory by addressing why Bombadil/Aule did not more actively assist in
the fight against Sauron, and how Aule could be said to have taken a
"vow of poverty". Unfortunately, his explanation for Bombadil's lack
of involvement is simply that Aule is not allowed by the will of the
(other) Valar to help directly: this seems inconsistent with Gandalf's
explanation that Bombadil could not safely guard the Ring because "he
would not understand the need" (and while Gandalf might not understand
who Bombadil was, he is the character least likely to be mistaken on
this point). Hargrove's discussion of the "vow of poverty" makes a
decent case, but he seems to have a different understanding of what
Tolkien meant by that term than I do.

In the end, while Hargrove's essay is very well written and
presents a wide range of arguments in support of his case, my
conclusion is that its initial premise is flawed and the evidence that
follows is considerably weaker than it may seem on a first reading. He
makes valuable points in multiple places, but fundamentally the
similarity between Bombadil and Aule (and between Goldberry and
Yavanna) is simply not very strong. It is certainly not compelling
enough to overcome all of the reasons to reject the idea in the first
place. The enigma of Tom Bombadil is a topic that can lead to some
great discussions and deep insight into the nature of Middle-earth, so
I hope that future conversations will be able to focus on theories
more relevant and viable than this one.

[1] In "Fog on the Barrow Downs",
Bombadil makes what could be an even stronger statement: "Out east my
knowledge fails. Tom is not master of Riders from the Black Land far
beyond his country." The meaning of "master" is unclear, but this
suggests that Tom does not see himself as "stronger" than the
Nazgul.